New York state briefs

Wednesday

Nov 28, 2007 at 12:01 AMNov 28, 2007 at 2:05 PM

Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2007

Staff reports

A new spin on the daily commute

HENRIETTA — While most of us comute by car, phys-ed teacher Corey Brandes is pedaling, taking in views of the sunset and wildlife from the seat of his bike on the Lehigh Valley Trail. By road, Brandes’ commute is 12-miles round trip. By trail, it's more like 26. He estimates he has ridden more than 1,000 miles since Sept. 1.

Brandes began commuting to work on a bike almost a year ago. "This summer we dropped from two cars to one, so there's no backing out now," he said. Bike commuters aren't as rare as one might think as Jason Crane of Rochester recently discovered when he launched www.rocbike.com. Since June, he estimates he has ridden 1,400 miles and lost 25 pounds.

He launched www.rocbike.com to serve as a means of chronicling his experiences. Crane said the site is now getting several thousand hits a week, sometimes even several thousand a day. The site features blogs, podcasts, links to articles of interest, tips, and news about group rides that are planned year around.

A hub within a hub

WEBSTER — Developer Larry Frumusa hopes that a mix of retail shops, restaurants and apartments will create a hub — "a lifestyles center" — within the village of Webster.

“People are getting away from big-box types of structures and are going for more of a central area where people can congregate,” said Frumusa.

The plans include about 60,000 square feet of commercial space that would be on the first floor of the structures and around 110 to 120 apartment units that would be on the second and, in some cases, the third floors of the buildings.

"You can eat there, live there and play there," said business owner Kathy Turiano of Webster. A similar mix of housing, retail and restaurants was proposed by other developers just last week for 37 acres in a nearby community, Canandaigua. Frumusa is currently building an estimated 172 apartment units and 59 townho

uses. Lifestyles centers were first developed in the 1980s, but the popularity has begun to increase within the past few years. They feature a combination of shopping, dining and living centers, with open-air shopping a key feature. "It's even to the point where there are no enclosed malls or they are being torn down and converted to lifestyle centers, which has completely changed the way retail is happening," said Terry McEwen president of Poag & McEwen Lifestyle Centers in Tennessee.